Friday, October 19, 2012

How to make guilt work for you... colour the house ME.

Dear George

I thought you'd be interested to hear how I've re-oriented my humans' home decoration plans to have a proper focus upon my needs. Tiresomely, they decided to extend the house last month. Cue builders, dust, banging and fearful smells. As you can imagine, I have gone out of my way to express my disgust. I have hidden in the wardrobe every day and refused to come out – even ignoring my male human's most earnest wheedling entreaties and proffered treats.  I know this hurts his feelings. 

I have also insisted upon being fed at the most inconvenient times, and have gone out of my way to get under their feet in the small room that now serves as a kitchen/diner/living room (half of the house is temporarily 'missing'). I have been sniffy, 'absent', difficult and aloof – all designed to impress upon them how deeply offended I am by these absurd Works.
Regrettably, I have been unable to stop the extension, which my people hopefully insist will be finished by Christmas (yet more proof – if more were needed – of how stupid human beings can be). On the upside, though, I've won an unusual victory in an unexpected quarter.
My people are hopeless with colours and decoration: everything's painted cream and white, because they haven't a clue about what looks good. After what felt like years of debate and argument, they finally saw what should have been obvious from the very start: that using ME as their colour palette is the perfect solution. My own rather attractive markings make clear that white and bluey-grey go frightfully well together. So now they're modelling the entire room on me. 
My female human keeps pretending it's so that my discarded fur won't be visible against the blue-grey kitchen tiles, but from the looks He keeps casting my way it's obvious we all know the Truth: That they're so deeply guilty about putting me through all the agonies of the build that they're doing me the honour of immortalising me in the kitchen décor.
My view? Well, I'm vaguely flattered of course. But only vaguely. In truth, as you'll agree, it's the least they can bloody do.

Herbie


Dear Herbie,
I must congratulate you on a splendid campaign of positive punishment (as we training theorists call it) towards your humans. You instigated a truly impressive series of tactics. Why did were they not effective? One possibility is that the punishment was too subtle. Had you been a large felid, you could simply have attacked them and produced serious injury. Alas, that tactic is not available to small felids.
Another less likely possibility is that the campaign failed to work due to the limited mental capacity of Homo sapiens. They may have failed to make the connection between the punishment and the Works. On the other hand their colour choice of British blue throughout suggests that they did have a glimmer of intelligence about your reaction. Perhaps they were simply in denial of the obvious, a frequent human failing.
I wish you well in the new kitchen. The fact that your humans feel guilt about it is a good sign for the future. Make 'em guilty, keep' em guilty, and eat all the extra food they give you "to make up".
Yours
George.

6 comments:

  1. Herbie, you lost some weight, am I right? Blame it on your selfish people. Having the kitchen in your color will help you sneak and steal food :-)
    Humans are stupid, man!
    Diego

    ReplyDelete
  2. Herbie, your humans should have consulted me before the renovation or change of colors. I'm quite an expert in Feng Shui and I'm reading a book (Fur-Shui for cats) a very, very dear friend sent it to me. Maybe I'll right a letter to George about the subject.
    Anyway, hope they'll match the tea cups to the new colors.
    Love
    Fluffy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Herbie, you are lucky that your humans at least try to please you matching the cupboards with your color! But....aren't they going to see any "extra" bit of food you eat on a blue-grey surface?
    Can you get up on their table?
    Zoe

    ReplyDelete
  4. Herbie, when all else fails, bite their ankles, they hate that.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Herbie, how are you my friend? You look good! Hey, don't let your humans fool you about the "kitchen" designed to match your colors!
    You should, actually MUST, take over 2/3 of the house (I know....I sound quite selfish). Allocate them 1/3!
    Make sure the master bedroom is within that 1/3 or otherwise you'll have no one to keep you warm in your king size bed :-)))
    Love
    Cayenne

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sir WinstonOctober 27, 2012

    I tried for the longest time to 'push" my housekeepers to the basement apt. with no success (guess ...due to the their lack of memory - as all they remembered was where the bedroom is). Try to put your accent to the decor! And, yes! make them feel guilty!
    Sir Winston

    ReplyDelete

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org